Users of mobile devices have access to text messaging, image messaging, video, and phone calling. But for those users, expressing emotions or body animations in messages is difficult. An avatar to mimic the face of a user is used to simulate human expression of the user. However, avatars are not able to support customization by users. Animation methods in use today fail to allow users to customize the avatar using sketch images. Animation methods also do not support avatar customization on a mobile device.